


Chasing Phantoms

by LaureLey



Series: Klaus/Cosette [4]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Bad Things Happen Bingo, Bilingual Character(s), F/M, French Characters, Heavy Angst, Medical Inaccuracies, Panic Attacks, Pregnancy, Self-Indulgent, Soap Opera, Some of the dialogue is in French but should be easily understood by context
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-15
Updated: 2021-03-15
Packaged: 2021-03-23 15:42:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30057759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LaureLey/pseuds/LaureLey
Summary: Just a few days, she'd promised, she'dsworn, she had to make it back for the wedding afterall, didn't she?A mission going awry has Cosette wake up three months too late.
Relationships: Original Female Character/Original Male Character
Series: Klaus/Cosette [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1320602





	Chasing Phantoms

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Nobody_Alchemist](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nobody_Alchemist/gifts).



> Depiction of a panic attack. That's... pretty much all of chapter one.  
> Poor baby is having it really rough.  
> Cosette and Pierre belong to Nobody_Alchemist. I don't even know if I'm using them with her permission; guess we'll find out.

“... Parti...?” she echoed. Her voice was faint, whisper-soft and struggled to leave the breath of her lungs as she repeated the word. Distantly, Cosette wondered the meaning, the implications of such a small word, as if it wasn't shattering her worse than the bones in her body had been. Gone, gone, gone, _what did he mean, gone?_

She tried to rise, but Pierre shook his head, a hand laying on her shoulder and keeping her in the lofty embrace of her mattress. She wanted more-- the human touch, the stroke of long, slender fingers against her cheek, calloused where he held a brush instead of holding a blade. She wanted him-- had expected him by her side, the moment she'd realized her nap had been a tad longer than a few hours. Gone, gone, gonegonegone--

_Gone?_

Pierre settled on the side of her bed, eyes lowered and holding onto her hand. He didn't speak as she circled her thoughts, chasing them into the rumble of something deep and dark and aching inside of her. There was a flash of denial, her voice rising and raking as she went to sit up again-- blast this grogginess!-- fighting to be _heard._

“Klaus? Partir? Il ne me ferait pas ça!” she claimed, her arms trying to coordinate well enough that she could push her bedclothes away. Where to? She didn't know. Well, not exactly. She knew she wanted to go _home,_ where her lover had remained-- just a few days, she'd promised, she'd _sworn, she had to be back for the wedding afterall, didn't she?_ \-- but she knew she would never make it in this state.

Her back and her limbs still ached, shaking from overuse or underuse or maybe emotions-- she couldn't even begin to guess. Rising had made her stomach plummet to her toes, but soar to her throat and bright glimpses of light narrowed her vision to nothing at all. Something bubbled in her throat and Cosette was shocked to find _laughter_ just before she bit back her _sobbing._

What had happened, what had happened, _whathadhappened?_

Her companion's mouth opened, but she couldn't bear to hear him say anymore, shaking her head violently until she could feel her vision cross. “IL NE ME FERAIT PAS ÇA!” she shouted, recoiling from the breathlessness-turned-roar. Her stomach twisted again, and she had to swallow back the bile that rotted at the back of her throat, her breathing spent and dizzy and lights crossing into shadows and--

Oh, heck.

She fell down just in time, vision blurred and blank, crossing and wavering into phantom territories. Her heartrate was _staggering,_ racing into her throat and her lungs and her head; her stomach was lost again, her hands twitching in the aftermath of too-much-too-little and she couldn't understand. She needed to calm down-- knew she needed to calm down, but her mind was racing ahead and away and back to his arms, and she wanted wanted _craved_ the peace and comfort her fiancé had borne for her, needed it to find _herself,_ because she couldn't even do that much right now. It wasn't until Pierre brushed away her tears that she even realized she was _crying._

She hadn't meant to cry. She hadn't meant to let her tears fall. And Pierre's hand-- careful, gentle, calloused hand-- delicately caressing the drops tore straight into her skin like glass, but she couldn't wish it away. There was comfort in his gesture, and raw as she felt, hurting her as it was-- wrong hands, wrong fingers, wrong _mannerisms_ \-- she wanted-needed what he offered, gentle and soft and brushing her cheek so lightly.

She shuddered in a breath, curling into the wrongful touch as she clung to any shred of decency. Pierre could not see her like this-- she was a master assassin. She was strong, had weathered people, friends, _her father_ dying on her and she had not cried in front of him. Klaus was not dead, it wasn't an _end, a void_ , but-- still-- she couldn't seem to bring her breath stable enough to _stop._

_Gone...?_

“Oh, Cosette.” Pierre's voice lowered to a hum, and struck her as hard as a hammer.

She'd gotten soft-- so soft. Sobs bubbled in her lungs with the storming of her thoughts, and she reached to stifle them, choke them down and suffocate the sounds. Klaus had been the one to hold her some time ago; the stone and anchor which had had weathered her cries. She curled onto her side, digging through the emptiness to recall the way his arms had surrounded her, the way his breath had stirred in her hair.

“ _You have no need to apologize, Hertzliebe,_ ” he had whispered across her forehead, ghosting touches along her back while she curled into his chest. “ _Your pain is my pain, and your joy is my joy. And though you travel the nights where I cannot step, I will hold your hand in mine to greet the morning by your side._ ”

“ _So breathe out your heartache, and lay the tears that drown you upon my shoulder; for only death could take me from you, and even then, not forever_.” She'd broken her silent sobs in a tearstained laugh, saying he'd made it sound like a vow.

He told her it was.

Had he _lied_?

Had Klaus _lied_ to her?

No. Never. Impossible. She vehemently rejected the thought, burying it behind teeth and daggers and chains alike. Klaus had never lied outright— would never lie to her; and most certainly not on such oaths. He'd already _written_ his oaths months before their wedding and knew them by heart, and _oh 'Dians, she had missed her wedding!_

Her sob swelled in her throat and stopped, lungs freezing as the realization slapped her in the face. _She had missed her wedding_. She wouldn't wear the white ethereal dress she had been so eager to try on. Her roses had all but shriveled already, and only a few late blooms would greet her back home. The letters she and Klaus had spent many an evening writing had turned out to be useless because _she wouldn't walk down the aisle to take his hand, because Klaus was gone gone gone gone and she didn't know where he had gone._

"Où est-il parti?"

The apathy of a thousand shocks lent her voice stability, settled a calm-like distance between the rotting of her thoughts and herself. They shook and churned under her skin, sheathing her in ice and cold and nibbling, biting nips at her fingertips, clawing shudders down her back, but pushing them away gave her something to _do_ , some measure to fight this all. She dragged her breath like one hauled water from a well, locking it into her lungs as she forced her stony limbs to move, to turn her deadened heart and face the ceiling. She forced her breath out, pushing back the nausea that burned the back of her throat and settled, letting the weight of it all press stone after stone onto her lungs until the air had vacated them entirely.

Pierre had been speaking, but she had lost his words within moments, dazed between brushing her thoughts aside and trying to focus enough that her body would cooperate. She tried to rise again with her gasps, lungs filling as though she might float back to the surface, but all it held was the acrid taste of bile refusing to leave her throat instead, twisting her stomach to knots then snarls. Her breathing huffed through heated lungs, seeping through her skin in the cold, damp sweat that traced her back and shoulders, dipping along the shallow bend of her spine. Her lungs rushed, her thoughts twisted, and Cosette had a moment to throw herself to the side before her stomach ripped heat along her throat, and what little she had in it spilled away from her.

Gone. _Klaus was gone._

Her eyes burned, her lungs were melting, but her skin was cold— so very cold. She was burning and she was frozen and her head and her lungs and her limbs hurt like she'd just smashed them into stone, ground them underneath a mortar and each shard of her still screamed in agony. Her voice was swallowed and her tears wouldn't stop and she heard the calls but couldn't comprehend their meaning other that someone was approaching and talking and speaking and her entire soul _twisted_.

No. No, she did not want help. No, she did not want them near her. No, she did not want to be seen, she did not want anyone else nearby. She crawled across her bed without even finding all her limbs, and plopped from the blankets to the floor with all the grace of a larvae worming out of its egg, kicking herself free. Her arms were weak and her feet were unsteady, but she saw a shape reach for her, and instinct gave away to mindless rote training and her aim was not as broken as the rest of her.

They stumbled back. She did not hear them cry out— did not hear the hit, but she saw them back away, staggered, like one saw through a fogged glass. Sight, sound, all of it was too much and touch raked at her skin like claws, leaving her raw and shivering, as though she'd been swallowed by ice. Her feet found the floor, her hand found a sturdy, steady weapon, and though the feel was wrong, odd, and uncomfortable, it was hers, and she held it aloft without thinking. Nobody else moved. Nobody else would move— she was a threat yet.

She was a threat.

Cosette couldn't say in which language she told them to go away— reality blurred and bent around the edges, and her thoughts made little to no sense. But leave they did, and in the silence they left behind, she found her breath. In the silence, she found herself.

She was shaking, and her head spun round and around, but the nausea had abated at last. The sun streaming from the opened windows hurt her eyes, and she was cold and hot at once, but the bed did not feel safe— too open and available and she needed less; narrow and small and dark and calm. She _wanted_ her husband's arms— _he'd given her his vows, he was hers and she missed him_ — but she could not get them yet; she would not get them yet.

Klaus was gone.

But she was going to get him back.

She shut the drapes with an unsteady hand, and curled herself in a corner of the darkened room, dragging her blankets along into a soft cocoon. In their hold, she lay, her weapon in hand, as she forced each breath through her shivering lungs, closed her eyes with darkness and calm, and let her thoughts run into chaos. Loud and soft at once, her mind drifting in the sea of screams and nightmares, her heartbeat filled her ears with the promise that kept her aloft just above the storm.

_I'm going to get him back. Come what may. I'm going to get him back._


End file.
